Rekindling some bad blood in the new ACC

By Madison Taylor / TImes-News

Published: Friday, April 12, 2013 at 01:02 PM.

So yes, count me among those who have hated league expansion so far.

Lately, though, I’ve given this matter second thought. Over the next two years, the ACC is swelling again. It takes in Syracuse and Pittsburgh next year and Louisville the year after that. Notre Dame will wedge itself in here somewhere, too. This might provide an excellent opportunity to develop some unreasonable distaste and loathing for one of the newcomers and get the old bad blood boiling again.

How about Anybody But Louisville?

Call me an ABLer, then.

I’ll get my Rick Pitino dartboard ready.

Madison Taylor is editor of the Times-News. Contact him by email at mtaylor@thetimesnews.com or follow him on Twitter @tnmadisontaylor.

I used to fall into that broad category of people loosely identified in the sports world around here as ABCers.

That’s ABC, as in Anybody But Carolina — meaning the state-supported university that features a well-decorated basketball team and other successful athletic programs in that mystical land known as Chapel Hill.

And I say broad category because it’s a pretty large collection of diverse people who don’t care much for what is otherwise by far the most popular sports team in the Tar Heel State. The ABC crowd features men and women; the rich and the poor, people of all races, creeds and colors. It contains people from Virginia and folks from Maryland and those who hail from Georgia and many from Florida, Kentucky and Tennessee. And, of course, there are a few from right here in North Carolina, particularly concentrated in Raleigh, Durham, Greenville, Winston-Salem . .

More than a few.

And, like I said, I used to be one of them.

Then about 30 years or so ago I reached an epiphany of sorts. I decided that perhaps the University of North Carolina wasn’t all bad and that Dean Smith might not be evil incarnate — in fact, the opposite was probably true. I began to believe that UNC didn’t always get favorable calls because the refs were on the payroll of the Rams Club, uh, Educational Foundation. Far from it. I noticed that perhaps it happened because UNC players were simply quicker, better coached and more talented than those on my team.

And I thought that perhaps the university where my mother and brother obtained degrees was in all likelihood a pretty decent place overall, it might even be outstanding and certainly deserving of respect and some grudging admiration.

Besides, my hating Carolina made my mother cry.

Yes, I finally concluded that when the Tar Heels, gulp, were in the NCAA basketball tournament, I should root for them against any and all teams from outside the state and Atlantic Coast Conference.

So I did. Right about the time Carolina toppled Georgetown on a shot by Michael Jordan, I ceased to be a hater. And while I’ll never fall fully into the Tar Heels camp of followers, I’m not someone who rejoices when they crash and burn either. In fact, it makes me a little melancholy.

From that point on, anytime an ACC team played some outside force in postseason, I sided with the conference. I rooted for N.C. State against Houston and Duke against Louisville, Nevada Las Vegas, Arkansas, Michigan, Arizona, UConn and Butler. I took Carolina’s side against Michigan, Kansas, Illinois, Michigan State, Utah and Florida. I even rooted for Maryland in 2002. Bless Gary Williams, he needed it so much more than the Hoosiers did.

Then a funny thing happened en route to middle age, a corn chip gut and relentless nodding off in my recliner — I lost interest in what teams win games inside the ACC, too. Oh, I still root for Wake Forest, desperately so — in the truest sense of the word desperate as it turns out. But, let’s face it, Wake Forest is pretty inconsequential in basketball these days and may be that way for a long time. Make that a long, long time.

And while UNC fans can work themselves into near spontaneous combustion over Duke, whose fans keep a low-burning malevolence directed at UNC, I simply can’t get that worked up over it at the moment.

League expansion can take some of the blame. The old Big Four was split into different divisions as the ACC sprawled to Boston, Blacksburg, Va. and Miami. Wake Forest stopped playing Carolina with any regularity. N.C. State isn’t even in the same division with UNC. When I look at the Demon Deacons home football schedule for next year I can’t find many games I’m interested in attending.

So yes, count me among those who have hated league expansion so far.

Lately, though, I’ve given this matter second thought. Over the next two years, the ACC is swelling again. It takes in Syracuse and Pittsburgh next year and Louisville the year after that. Notre Dame will wedge itself in here somewhere, too. This might provide an excellent opportunity to develop some unreasonable distaste and loathing for one of the newcomers and get the old bad blood boiling again.

How about Anybody But Louisville?

Call me an ABLer, then.

I’ll get my Rick Pitino dartboard ready.

Madison Taylor is editor of the Times-News. Contact him by email at mtaylor@thetimesnews.com or follow him on Twitter @tnmadisontaylor.